My avatar doesn’t have a tears function. Avatars are happy. I rip off the smart glasses, then sit on the unmade bed at home and cry my heart out.

These days, when I enter or leave the house, I greet the ghosts cheerfully, welcoming them, requesting that they behave well – they are my tenants, after all. I understand that they prefer to be out and about at night – but I ask that they do so without involving me. The radio still switches itself on in the kitchen from time to time – but not

(Limbus is Latin for ‘edge’, so Limbo is just outside the boundary of Hell proper,

Oh, but listen, and why would it not be true – if there is such a thing as life after death, perhaps you will meet someone else? At first that thought is unpleasant. Yet, I want you to be happy. We didn’t split up. You left because the only thing as powerful as love came for you: the Angel of Death. Death is final. No. Not final. I love you past

They ate by candlelight – it should have been romantic, but the shadows sat at the table with them, two candles hardly lighting their plates. In the gloom each of them looked different, and gradually they became different.

Can you believe he’s still alive, in a bungalow, in Bournemouth? I’ve been to visit him, made a few things happen – ectoplasm, electrical failures, horrible noises in the night. He’s so stupid he doesn’t notice. He’ll be dead soon and then I’ll make his life hell.’

I like city noises when I am high up above them. It sounds as though it’s the sea, far away, and I am safe, because it’s nothing to do with me; it’s the way you feel safe as a child, when the grown-ups’ noises downstairs become the soundtrack of sleep.

As Samuel Johnson put it, back in the eighteenth century: ‘All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.’

In the kitchen, the counter-lights are on low. The fridge hums. The radio is playing. I listen. It’s one of those shock-jock radio hosts. Conspiracy. Aliens. Vaccines. John’s late-night listening. On the table there’s a bottle of Pinot Noir and a half-drunk glass. John’s jacket hangs over the chair.